Ghost Story

Boos and Booze with Strange Escapes First Cruise.

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Ive been home from the Strange Escapes first ever cruise for a little over a week now but have spent it nursing a case of bronchitis.  Luckily, it wasn’t due to the cruise or the travel.  It was the lovely allergen ridden area I live in that got me.  But the illness has delayed my many posts I’ve planned on writing!  So lets get started!

  The cruise was great!!!  I had so much fun getting to hang out and socialize with all of my fellow Escapees.  Our events usually last a full weekend and the weekends are chock full of awesome lectures so there isn’t always time to really hang out with the people we meet and really get to know them.  The cruise was different.  Being stuck in one area with everyone, with a couple days without even docking actually gave us time to hang out and talk and get to know each other more than we normally would have been able to.  Some people I’ve seen at multiple SE events and have said “hi” in passing but have never really had the opportunity to get to know.

There were also a bunch of new Escapees this trip which was very cool.  I did hear a lot from the newbies say that the trip was definitely different than they had expected.  To those comments I always responded with a, “You definitely should come to a regular Escape, because they’re more like what you were envisioning.”  There weren’t many lectures and we had a lot of free time on our hands, but thats the way the trip was designed.  It was a vacation trip with 200 friends, not an investigation weekend.  The ship had its own schedule and plans that the SE crew had to work with and around so it made things a little tricky.  But overall, it went off really well!  The speakers for this trip were Amy Bruni (who owns and runs Strange Escapes), Adam Berry, Grant Wilson (all from Syfy’s Ghost Hunters), Chip Coffey (from Psychic Kids and numerous other TV shows), John E.L. Tenney (from Ghost Stalkers), and Tim Weisburg (from Spooky South Coast paranormal podcast.)

The excursions were GREAT despite the insane humidity that we experienced.  (I’ll write more about my excursions individually.)  Life on the boat got more and more interesting, if not disturbing at times, as the week went on.  The Strange Escapes group had 2 cocktail parties together and a scheduled dinner, as well as 2 group excursions to Mayan ruins.

  A big group of us also took over the English pub on a nightly basis and participated (read endured) the nightly karaoke that went on.  Ah, the karaoke.  I still have nightmares about it.  I can still hear the off key, shrill, screaming echoing in the back of my brain when I hear certain songs.  Don’t get me wrong, there were a handful of legitimately good singers, it’s just that most of them were chased off by the not good to down right awful singers.  The first night, everyone was pretty decent but by night 7, we were lucky we were in the ocean or there may have been packs of angry dogs chasing the boat down.  Lets just say, there was a definite reason why we didn’t see a single whale or dolphin anywhere near the ship.  We endured the torment though because the pub felt homey, the drinks were decent and the wait staff was awesome!  By the end of the week, I called our waiter Aaron, my BFF.  He was a very interesting guy and was definitely a trooper for putting up with our crazy group.  (If, you’re ever on a Norwegian Cruise and have a bar waiter named Aaron from St. Lucia, tip him well!)

  The ship was so full of interesting people.  When a group of people that get together to search for ghosts and other strange and unexplained things, are not the weirdest people on the boat, you know there are some “colorful” people around.  The ship becomes its own little world within a week and certain passengers even become “celebrities” in a way (Tim G. I’m talking to you here.)  But like I said, as the week goes on, the ship dynamic changes and gets much weirder, especially at night.  Day 1, people dress nicer and are well behaved and polite to each other.  It’s very common to eat with people you don’t know because space is a hot commodity in restaurants and it’s nice to meet the people around you.  That’s something you don’t really experience on a daily basis out in the real world.  By day 3 or 4, people have been spending a lot of time out in the sun and heat.  They’re sunburnt, they’re hungover, they’re sick of people and they’re getting tired of being on the ship.  Basically, they start getting cranky and sometimes, down right rude.  Nights start getting calmer in certain areas of the ship because a lot of people decide to call it a day early or stay in and watch a movie.  And then there’s the areas like the pub (were my friends and I hung out) and (cringe) the Spinnaker Lounge.  By the last night of the cruise, a lot of people have just plain lost their damn minds.  That song with the lyrics “The freaks come out at night…” well, it wasn’t lying.  I’m pretty sure people forget the social norms by day 7 and they just go for broke no matter who’s watching…..  Some things just CANT. BE. UNSEEN!

So may good times were had, inside jokes were born, new legends were written about interesting people, late night talks were had about punk bands, new friends were made, and after a week of trying, I got my 2am bowl of pickles. 

 
Overall, the cruise was a lot of fun.  Definitely not bad for a first go at a big group trip!  Kudos to Amy and Sarah for setting everything up, despite all of the hiccoughs that popped up.  Rumor has it that next years cruise will be leaving from Salem Mass.  I cannot wait!

To the SE friends I met and made shipboard, see you all soon!

Back at it again!

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Hey there strangers!  It’s been a while hasn’t it? Things got away from me for a bit.  I also haven’t been doing much traveling since my Gettysburg trip. I did go to Disneyland for New Years per my yearly tradition which was fun.  I’m thinking of doing a Disneyland specific page on here for those interested in that travel.  However, things are about to get interesting in the next month or so. 

Next week, I’m headed off to the fantastically spooky Stanley Hotel for my yearly Strange Escapes trip.  This year the Traveling Museum of the Paranormal and Occult will be there which I’m excited to see.  My friend Kaci will also be joining me this go round.

Then soon after, I’m headed on the first ever Strange Escapes at sea adventure.  It starts in New Orleans, which is somewhere I’ve been dying to visit for a long time.  This adventure will take me to not only some Carribean islands but also to South America where I’ll be getting to investigate Mayan pyramids.  How cool is THAT?!  After we disembark from the ship, my mom and I will be spending some extra time in New Orleans, exploring the French Quarter, cemeteries, voodoo shops, and hopefully the abandoned amusement park. That’s going to be an epic trip! 

Make sure you’re following my Instagram page because I post a lot of pictures from my trips on there!  Also, I’ll be having a giveaway on there as a thank you to my followers.  I’m excited to get back up and running after being home for a while.  Adventure is calling!

Night time walk on a Gettysburg battlefield.

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This weekend, I’ve been in Gettysburg for a Strange Escapes event.  This place is unlike any other I’ve ever been to. Just driving into town, you can feel the heaviness of the area. Its thick with history. I recommend that people come here if ever possible. I’ve been on tours explaining the battle strategies each side used and I never realized how close the Civil War was.  If one little plan went wrong, our country could be DRASTICALLY different. It’s almost overwhelming to think about.

Last night after our investigation, a couple other ladies and I decided to go check out the battlefield at night. First, let me put in this disclaimer.  The park closes at 7pm.  We went well after closing and were technically trespassing.  I don’t advise it.  There.  I’ve officially said don’t trespass.  Now on to our walk.

After being obnoxious to another group walking through the battlefield after we mistook them for some of our group, we walked up a road that used to be a creek.  As we walked, we kept finding pockets that held that “zing” some investigators get before activity happens.  At the first spot, we stopped and looked up the hill because it felt like at any moment, soldiers could walk over the ridge.  As we watched and waited, I noticed someone standing under a large tree.  I pointed him out and the others could see him too.  We could clearly see his legs and that he was wearing a long coat that stopped just above his knees.  We watched him for a minute or two and then he just kind of dissolved into nothing.  Today, I went back in the day to see if I could find the tree and make sure there were no monuments that we might have mistaken as a person.  There are a lot of monuments in the area but none of them matched what I saw.  Very interesting.

  
The tree on the left is where I saw the soldier.  He was standing to the left of the tree. There is a statue like the one on the right of the man on the horse but, it’s not very visible from the spot we were at and it also didn’t look like what we saw.

After that awesome experience, we walked further down the road. On the left, there is a field that we felt like at any moment, you could see people walking through the field. On the right, is a hill with cool old stone fences.

  
We stopped again at a pair of gnarly old trees because we felt that “zing” again. Pretty soon, we started hearing footsteps walking through the leaves. They were rhythmic and steady. After a few moments of listening, we noticed a mist staring to form and move across the hill in behind the tree and following the sound of the footsteps. My favorite part was when we started to hear the wooden wheels of either a cannon or a wagon rolling along with the steps. It was so distinct. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my digital recorder on at the time so I didn’t catch it.  It’s just a personal experience but it was so awesome, I wanted to share it.

  
 
People experience these types of things all the time here. It’s an almost magical place in spite of the terrible, bloody history.  It’s one thing to read about the events in a history book but it’s an entirely different thing walking through the actual locations. It hits you in the heart to look at the ground and imagine that 55,000 men and boys died on that land within a 3 day period. It’s staggering and overwhelming. Most importantly, it’s incredibly moving.

I definitely want to come back here again.